This year's arts fest will invoke gods, spirits and legends

ARTS lovers run the risk of getting heart palpitations reading the next line: Robert Wilson, Martha Graham, Bertolt Brecht, Hiroshi Sugimoto, JM Barrie and Mansai Nomura are among the big names set to light up the marquee at this year's Singapore International Festival of Arts.

Wilson, the legendary avant-garde director best known for his collaboration with Philip Glass on Einstein on the Beach, will be staging Peter Pan as a musical fairytale for adults. However, the story of the fearless flying boy will be told not with a sweet Disney-esque charm - but with a dark and cruel edge.

As Wilson put it in an interview with Artinfo Germany: "I think Peter Pan is a prism of very many personas - the dark sides of the character and the lighter sides, and how they somehow support each other. This is one of the failures of Disney's Peter Pan; it's too light. Only when you're in hell do you know where heaven is."